Previews

Beowulf

During our demonstration, we got to see two new areas of this ancient king's stomping grounds. In the first, Beowulf and a group of lightly armored thanes went to assault an enemy's stronghold. Set atop a low hill, Beowulf's company was set upon by the more primitive troops of the enemy almost immediately. Although the camera seemed a bit too close-in, the game's team has captured the chaos of battle.

The Fury of the Berserker

All around Beowulf, blood sprayed into the mud and men struggled for their lives. Different types of enemy troops fought differently, and although we didn't see any particularly advanced tactics from the enemy, this wasn't a final build. Looking at the field of battle, it seems clear that it's worth getting at least a bit of a morale boost early in. That blue glow makes it much easier to see which of the dozen or so fighters you might be seeing at a time are yours, and which are in need of a Beowulfin'.

Ordering thanes to attack certain targets or move certain objects is easy enough. Press the left bumper and your face buttons instantly map to context-sensitive commands, based on where you're looking. Enemy units will give you combat choices; the massive wheel set into the earth in front of the demo's enemy stronghold gives you the choice to send thanes to turn it. We'll see how flexible and intuitive your command of your thanes is in the final build, but since half of the game's play revolves around them, we're presuming it'll be solid.

Our other demonstration level was the game's first boss fight, versus a writhing ocean full of massive sea serpents. By massive, we mean that when these creatures smash their heads into your lonely island platform (you swam there, barely surviving some disaster not revealed in the demo. We presume sea serpent attack), your burly warrior barely clears their lower lip. Weaponless, he's utterly helpless against the physical smashing attacks of the sea serpents' tails and the howling breath they use to try to send him flying off the island.

This level is actually where you gain your carnal abilities, specifically as you sink through the ocean, having inevitably been smashed into it by the sea serpents. Without spoiling how you power-up, we returned to the platform with the pounding red of the carnal mode overlay. In carnal mode you gain additional finishing moves, on top of the set each enemy type already has, and carnal mode is just enough versus these monsters to give you any chance at all.

Still bare-fisted, we now waited until one of the cyclopean sea serpents put its ugly face on our island to try to blow us back into the ocean. A simple punch stunned the thing, showing players just what sort of power they're being given. From there (still in regular gameplay, not some "cineractive sequence"), we ripped one of the reptilian spikes from the serpent's massive head, quickly clambered to the top of its nearly mountainous skull, and slammed the massive improvised weapon through its single eye. From that scream, we can also assure you that the sound design is coming along very well.

There's a lot left to see of Beowulf, and its integration of fast-paced squad command with brutal single-player action is an interesting gameplay twist. We'd like to see more control over the Legacy system, perhaps letting us turn our thanes into super soldiers while we rely on our own skill as gamers, not character upgrades, to survive as Beowulf. And while it provides a real tactical advantage, the blue glow of "high morale" doesn't do much to retain the savage feel that the team of the game is trying to capture. We'll see whether Beowulf is king or beast when it releases this November alongside the film.